I’m surprised Josh Willis would get involved in this as a co-author. Ok… here’s the press release title:
First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans
And here’s a quote from the body of the press release:
“Many scientists and models have suggested that if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow. Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell,” wrote Famiglietti and lead author Tajdarul Syed of the Indian School of Mines, formerly of UCI.
Do these guys even read their own press releases? I want my California State taxes back.From UC Irvine:
First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans
UCI-led team cites global warming, accelerated cycle of evaporation, precipitation
Irvine, Calif. — Freshwater is flowing into Earth’s oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming. All told, 18 percent more water fed into the world’s oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994, with an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.
“That might not sound like much – 1.5 percent a year – but after a few decades, it’s huge,” said Jay Famiglietti, UC Irvine Earth system science professor and principal investigator on the study, which will be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He noted that while freshwater is essential to humans and ecosystems, the rain is falling in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons.
“In general, more water is good,” Famiglietti said. “But here’s the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it. What we’re seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted – that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
In essence, he said, the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously because of greenhouse gas-fueled higher temperatures, triggering monsoons and hurricanes. Hotter weather above the oceans causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land. The rainfall then travels via rivers to the sea in ever-larger amounts, and the cycle begins again.
The pioneering study, which is ongoing, employs NASA and other world-scale satellite observations rather than computer models to track total water volume each month flowing from the continents into the oceans.
“Many scientists and models have suggested that if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow. Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell,” wrote Famiglietti and lead author Tajdarul Syed of the Indian School of Mines, formerly of UCI.
“This paper uses satellite records of sea level rise, precipitation and evaporation to put together a unique 13-year record – the longest and first of its kind. The trends were all the same: increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean.”
The researchers cautioned that although they had analyzed more than a decade of data, it was still a relatively short time frame. Natural ups and downs that appear in climate data make detecting long-term trends challenging. Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.
Other authors are Don Chambers of the University of South Florida, Joshua Willis of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and Kyle Hilburn of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif. Funding is provided by NASA.
About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.9 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.
News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UCI faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university.
UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit www.today.uci.edu/experts. For UCI breaking news, visit www.zotwire.uci.edu.
=========================================
The paper that the article is based on can be found here. (Thanks to Bill Illis)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/28/1003292107.full.pdf+html
This type of research is the equivalent of the drunk looking for his lost car keys under a streetlight. We have 13 years of data but we can detect trends for the next 90 years.
Those handing out grant money have a lot to answer for with respect to the corruption and debasement of scientific research.
* “accelerating dangerously” – What is dangerous about this acceleration? Are the Australians worried about drought complaining about more rain?
* “because of greenhouse gas” – Does this study show that greenhouse gases are responsible? Which greenhouse gas – water vapor?
* “higher temperatures” – Did this study show that higher temperatures are the reason for increased precipitation, or did this study only show higher precipitation may exist?
* “triggering monsoons and hurricanes” – Some studies have found no increase in these.
“hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
The Sahel is greening.
“Many scientists and models…….”
Why would the likes of Eva Herzigova or Kate Moss be commenting on such high fallutin’ things as freshwater input into oceans?
Might spruce up the odd scientific journal if they appeared ex camera……
Trenberth has a new paper which shows nothing is really going on with global precipitation numbers (since 1980) or global river discharge and land precipitation levels (since 1950). (Ice-sheets are melting enough to add a few tenths of millimetre per year to sea level according to other estimates).
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8974/trenberthprecipitation.png
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/2026/riverdischargeandprecip.png
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/ClimateChangeWaterCycle-rev.pdf
I think he needs to get over his “Grade School” Mentality to understand that climate on a regional basis changes over time. One should expect changing water flow in an ever changing world and by picking dates and regions one can show what ever pattern one wants to see. Hydrologists have shown that this condition has been experienced throughout history. Further research will only end with the same results.
‘accelerating dangerously’ and ‘no evidence’ seem to make this paper more of an outline for another big Hollywood movie than a paper that has anything to do with the real world.
I wonder how many AGW promoters are frustrated movie producers?
Strange! According to our old friend, Stevie-boy, the levels are dropping – how come?
If all these rivers and glaciers are poring H2O into the sea, surely…..??
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/sea-level-falling-in-2010/
We DO live in challenging times, don’t we?
On the contrary, precipitation is an important potential feedback in climatology. Turning off the thermohaline circulation is one potential consequence. The results could go either way possibly even functioning as a negative feedback in AWG.
Just take a look at Sydney Harbour after a few days heavy rain and see the pristine blue green turn transformed into a silty brown and you’ll immediately see the relevance. Equally, think of fertiliser washed onto coral reefs (potentially a greater and more immediate threat to these environments than warming).
So, it’s raining more, but we have more heat induced droughts, even though there is more rain…. Because?… Maybe it’s the wrong kind of rain. Maybe it’s “rotten rain”…
“But here’s the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it.”
So if nature doesn’t cooperate, it’s ‘wrong’ somehow? It’d also be nice if these people would take a moment to think about what’s stopping water from getting to these regions. Last I checked the governments of the world virtually controlled water supplies, and these are the people who are supposed to solve the ‘problem’.
“What we’re seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted – that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms.”
I also recall a prediction which said snow would be a thing of the past and that northern hemisphere snow cover would recede, which is kind of at odds with increased precipitation. But hey, if you predict everything, anything counts as validation.
“Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
You’d think the Sahara was always a desert the way these people talk. One has to wonder if they realize that the Earth isn’t a static system. It changes. It has changed in the past, it will change in the future. I wonder when they’re going to blame tectonic drift on global warming. Oh wait, they already have…
So confirmation that the hydrological cycle is doing it’s work by speeding up and releasing more energy to space – no surprise there! The energy dissipated by this massive global heat pump dwarfs any puny effect from CO2 and prevents the possibility of runaway warming. It is negative feedback.
As this turbulent process is driven by deterministic chaos, where the extra precipitation will fall cannot be predicted and any trend seen in the data is just an artefact of the choice of time period.
The paper that the article is based on can be found here.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/28/1003292107.full.pdf+html
Nonsense.
Height gauge measurements on all major rivers have been available for many, many years. To suggest otherwise is a blatent lie. Why not just analyse them? My guess is that they don’t show any such trend! Lies, damned lies and computer generated model inaccuracies.
They should write their report as a one panel toon, save paper.
“Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
Perhaps they could use some advice:
So where do these people think this extra rain (even given the possibility their numbers are right, which doesn’t appear to be the case) comes from? THE MOON?
For crying out loud, folks, these dolts don’t realize the vast majority comes from the OCEAN, to which it will return (evaporation from continents and lakes along with ice fields being about the only other source).
This would only be a problem is the water didn’t RETURN to the oceans (I shudder to think they may read this, get the wrong impression, and geoengineer some way to put all this “extra” water back on the moon).
Funny, but to think it over:
http://thezodiacgrill.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/aquarius-personality-traits.jpg
It happened 12,000 years ago too. 🙂
The satellite SLR is probably overstated by at least a factor of two but they assume the evaporation rate has doubled because of assumed SLR, then they don’t know the flow rate of rivers but again assume the water cycle has intensified.
When their LOSU gets above the bottom level maybe we could listen.
” the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously”
NO ONE ON THIS PLANET HAS THE EXPERTISE TO MAKE THIS STATEMENT !!!!!!!
SHEER OPINION & wishful thinking.
What if the water cycle is not closed but opened up?. During summer time mainly above the south pole and due to increased radiation, atmosphere´s oxygen is turned into Ozone (O3), which during winter time and specially when there are proton flares from the sun or increased cosmic rays, as during solar minimums (mainly composed of protons-90%-, which, btw, we must remember are Hydrogen Nucleii), then these react with ozone to produce water :
2H+…O3=H2O+O2
and increase the “Ozone Hole” once again …….
So, . . . more fresh water is a bad thing? I’m so confused (not!).
FWIW, regional river flow is well tracked for the northeast at http://www.erh.noaa.gov/nerfc/ . They also have data from the flood control dams built after the extreme rains in the 1920s and 30s, which are probably not in that 13 year satellite reconstruction. They have some really good data, I assume data of equal quality exists for the rest of the lower 48. Don’t know about the rest of the world.
There is historical precip data from the NWS Coop observers program. You’d think someone could get the NCDC to “clean” that up and infer runoff rates from that. (Yes, I realize that data has to be in far, far, worse shape than the temperature data, but it would give the community something else to argue about for years!)
“Sound and fury, signifying nothing”!
Now, colour me stupid, but how on earth does an increased cycle ( increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean) of water cause an increase in ocean levels that can be measured?
Ah! The penny (or solid gold coin) drops!
Chris1958 says:
“Turning off the thermohaline circulation is one potential consequence.”
Studies of the sediments in the Gulf of Mexico indicate that the Gulf Stream flow is higher in warmer times and slower with colder – the opposite of the alarmist unfounded assumption. This actually makes sense as the water would be more viscous and the temperature differential possibly less steep in a cool phase.
“The researchers cautioned that although they had analyzed more than a decade of data, it was still a relatively short time frame. Natural ups and downs that appear in climate data make detecting long-term trends challenging. Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.”
Grant Money!!!
“I’m Rich! I’m socially secure! woowowowooo!”
-Daffy Duck.
I recall reading somewhere that speeding up of the hydrological cycle is what should happen INSTEAD OF global warming.
2010: the year rivers were discovered.
PNAS = the Big Box Mart for pal review tabloid science.
“Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.””
Not too worried about Scottsdale, but last time I checked, there were lots of news items and papers online that said rainfall in the Sahel was on the increase, and that the southern limit to the Sahara was moving north. This was several years ago, and made me think that more global warming would be a good thing. Is anyone tracking this currently?
Here’s a pertinent quote from the actual paper Bill Illis linked to:
“Surprisingly, owing to a number of socioeconomic and political obstacles,
a comprehensive global river discharge observing system
does not yet exist. Here we use 13 years (1994–2006) of satellite
precipitation, evaporation, and sea level data in an ocean mass
balance to estimate freshwater discharge into the global ocean.
Results indicate that global freshwater discharge averaged
36,055 km3∕y for the study period while exhibiting significant
interannual variability driven primarily by El Niño Southern Oscillation
cycles. The method described here can ultimately be used to
estimate long-term global discharge trends as the records of
sea level rise and ocean temperature lengthen. For the relatively
short 13-year period studied here, global discharge increased by
540 km3∕y2, which was largely attributed to an increase of globalocean
evaporation (768 km3∕y2). Sustained growth of these flux
rates into long-term trends would provide evidence for increasing
intensity of the hydrologic cycle.”
So the actual increase was 540 / 36,055 = a 1.5% increase over a 13 year period.
Take into consideration that the difference in rainfall is significantly different in El Nino and La Nina years, and that there is roughly a 60 year cycle in El Nino/ La Nina activity, and there’s nothing to get excited about in the actual paper.
The authors note that the variability is correlated with the ENSO. One can clearly see the 1997-98 El Nino in their results.
So, the period chosen is going to influence the results. The 1994 to 2006 period has a slight upward trend in the ENSO and the proxies of precipitation.
This is 1994-2006 covering the Nino 3.4 index and Out-Going Long-Wave Radiation (OLR) 20S-20N – which is very closely correlated with cloud cover and precipitation [most of the rain falls in the wide-tropics of 20S-20N and most of the global variability could be expected to occur here as well so OLR should be a reasonable proxy for global precip. and the numbers are quite similar to the paper’s charts].
Thus, it is mainly the period chosen since the data in this chart has no trend at all when taken over the long-term.
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/4691/ensoolr2020942006.png
Has there been a decrease in salinity of seawater because of this? Mixing times notwithstanding this much fresh water would have an effect there, perhaps in isotopic signature as well.
Data for UK from 1961 onwards
http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/ih/nrfa/hydrological_trends/hydrological_var61.htm
http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/ih/nrfa/river_flow_data/nrfa_retrievals.htm
Google found it in 0.2 secs, someone wasn’t looking
So increasing human population is considered to be a closed system, thus can’t be causing increased CO2 at Mauna Loa, but bygawdamighty the hydrological cycle is an open system and must be, what, taxed?
The current state of climatology reminds me of a card game my kids used to play. The rules were made up and changed throughout the play. The kid that won was the person that got mad the most, tore up the cards, and/or hit his kid brother. At which time I sent the lot of em to bed for a much deserved nap. These people who make up the so called “esteemed” published climate researchers list need to be sent to their room.
Bill Illis says: “Trenberth has a new paper which shows nothing is really going on with global precipitation numbers (since 1980) or global river discharge and land precipitation levels (since 1950).”
Thanks for the links. Trenberth Figure 5…
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/2026/riverdischargeandprecip.png
…shows why Syed et al (2010) picked 1994 as a start year: Global precipitation was still on the rebound from the Mount Pinatubo dip.
Remarkable.
If you ask me, it kinda ties up with the ground water story.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/29/pielke-on-ground-water-extraction-causing-sea-level-rise/
So I guess the Amazon is filled up again and the Great Lakes – there was a lot rain and snow thee the last few years.I wonder what their new research will show.
OMG The land is weeping; the Earth is crying!! We must find a way to push back the rivers as well as the tides!
When the water cycle accelerates the air circulation systems move poleward as was indeed observed during the recent natural tropospheric warming period.
When it decelerates the air circulation systems move equatorward as they have been doing since 2000. We are now at the start of a natural tropospheric cooling period.
Given the observed fact that the process of poleward shifting has now gone into reverse despite increasing CO2 the fears about AGW are already falsified.
If precipitation does appear to have been increasing over the past ten years or so then it will be because a cooling troposphere can hold less vapour as water so precipitation increases whilst at the same time evaporation is decreasing due to the slower water cycle overall. For the time being the former prevails over the latter and will do so until the cooling process ceases.
During a natural warming spell evaporation increases but precipitation lags behind because a warming troposphere holds more water in vapour form. However one still gets increasing precipitation in a warming world as well because increasing precipitation is a consequence of CHANGE whether it be towards warming OR cooling. That is because both a warming and a cooling troposphere are a result of increasing temperature differentials arising from temperature changes on the ocean surfaces below or in the the stratosphere above.
The least precipitation is when there is neither cooling nor warming of the troposphere which is when temperature differentials between sea surface and tropopause are at a minimum. That never lasts long.
Looking at the effect of CO2 in isolation a faster hydrological cycle prevents extra downward IR from more CO2 from becoming measurable sensible heat by converting it immediately into unmeasurable latent heat which is then accelerated upward by faster convection in order to radiate it away into space faster from a higher level with zero effect on surface temperatures.
Since water vapour is lighter than air one doesn’t even need higher surface temperatures to give more convection. Increased evaporation giving rise to more water vapour is sufficient on it’s own.
They are complaining about the very process that negates and disposes of any AGW warming. However the natural cycles are far, far larger hence the equatorward shift of the air circulation syatems and the consequent slowing of the water cycle despite more CO2 in the air.
All regional climate changes including increasing or decreasing rainfall are simply a result of the individual region changing it’s position relative to the nearest air circulation systems.
Total precipitation changes globally as a result of natural tropospheric warming and cooling cycles are much too large for any human contribution to be measurable. Regional changes in precipitation from changing relative geographical positions between localities and the air circulations above or near them are much too large for any contribution provided by global precipitation changes to be measurable.
The real value of this article is in it’s recognition (at last) that the SPEED of the hydrological cycle has relevance to the global energy budget.
The alarming defect is that for all their scientific credentials the writers fail to see the obvious connection with the effects of the phase changes of water and the consequent stabilising effect on temperatures (wholly negative, highly effective and almost infinitely scaleable).
This water vapour, cloud and precipitation, shifting air circulation (especially jet streams) blind spot in the minds of AGW proponents is what I find most difficult to understand.
“Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.”
Of course, get it while you can…………………until retirement. LOL!
Since fresh water is pH neutral(ish) then the additional dilution of the oceans will result in even more acidification!!!
Anyroads, I was swimming in the Atlantic last week off the Canaries, and it tasted just as salty to me, so clearly it isn’t happening (there, real evidence!)
Doesn’t more rain mean more cloud so higher albedo which cools the Earth leading to less evaporation and less cloud and lower albedo leading to higher temps so more evaporation and more cloud and…..
OMG… IT’S A CYCLE
The rain and evaporation cycle is accelerating because the models say so. The models say it is accelerating because those that write the models write it into the models. They write the acceleration into the models because the models show it is accelerating.
Doesn’t this study (insufficient time scale notwithstanding) directly contradict the notion of positive water vapor feedback?
I fail to see how we can simultaneously have positive water vapor feedback (self perpetuating temp increase due to increased greenhouse water vapor and reduced cloud albedo), yet still see an increase in precipitation.
Climate disruption really is worse than we thought! Now it’s violating conservation of mass and energy!
Over on Discovery they are talking about the oceans getting saltier as a result of Global Warming. Now the oceans are going to get too much fresh water. They need to keep their stories straight.
Are they not aware that it takes 22% of the incoming energy from the sun to cause the current evaporation rate? The energy needed to cause a significant increase in evaporation is enormous. Slightly more than 1 m per year of the oceans evaporates. That dwarfs all the energy that mankind has ever produced.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Chris1958
The Indian Ocean around the Seychelles turns cloudy during and after each monsoon season too. It’s caused by algae blooms which in turn cause fish from over a large area of the Indian Ocean to congregate there around those times.
Could the “browning” of Sydney Harbour be in part a similar phenomenon and equally benign?
Its good to track rainfall and how it flows to rivers and the oceans. As someone wrote in their comments river flow is measurable. But the claim rain is falling in all the wrong places for all the wrong reasons is difficult to understand. How can rain fall for the wrong reason.
Global warming is a political agenda and so is redustribution by the government for equality and it should not be in a scientific report or press release. The reputation of a university and title of professor should not be used in such a fashion.
And California can’t meet its financial obligations so don’t expect any tax refunds anytime soon. Just try to get a refund on anything overpaid to California.
What increased Hurricanes and Monsoon’s are they referring too? Hasn’t Hurricane activity been at 100 year lows the last few years?
Omigod! omigod! omigod…… It’s getting hotter, colder, wetter, dryer, windier, calmer, sunnier, duller…… What are we eva gonna do!?
Quick……. Tax th’ citizenry and hire more bureaucrats. That’ll fix it.
…. sigh 🙁
Okay…this is like shooting fish in a barrel. WUWT readers have already dissected this nonsense very thoroughly. You would think that we could get more of a challenge from the billions spent on AGW research.
Come on, you warming fear mongers! Is this all you got?
Chris1958;
I live in Sydney, and have done so for decades—and visited often from Queensland before that, and I’ve never ever seen Sydney Harbour a ‘silty-brown’ colour—and nor have any other Sydneysiders that I know.
[i]”the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously”[/i]
This is typically a statement that can be refuted easily and that’s 2500 joule energy required for one gram of water evaporating.
One can see here the annual evaporation:
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/99/53799-004-BE5542D4.gif
So let’s assume an average of 1 cube meter per square meter per year evaporating (conservative), that would mean 1,000,000 ml per 31,536,000 seconds or 0,032 ml/sec. So the evaporation energy of one meter water per year is 2500*0.032 = 80 w/m2. You will see that this value is roughly the same in the IPCC tables.
But now, for every 1% increase in evaporation at the earth surface, obviously an additional 0.8 w/m2 is required. This energy is NOT avaible to heat up the Earth surface. It will become available when condensation is taking place, -cloud forming-, hence higher in the atmosphere and closer to outer space to be radiated out.
So if doubling CO2 is maybe causing an additiona; 3.7 w/m2 at the earth surface, the additional heating will be lessened by latent heat loss due to that evaporation. It would be interesting to see what kind of energy would be required to maintain a constant relative humitidy (RH) as the temperature increases. We can use this online calculator for that:
http://www.humidity-calculator.com/index.php
If I use a temp of 15C and 50% RH I get and absolute humidity of 6.44 gr/m3. Now if we increase the temp to 16C maintaining the 50% RH means now 6.84 gr/m3 an increase of some 6.25%. Clearly if the water cycle would increase by that amount, it would require about 5 w/m2 additional energy to evaporate all that. But doubling CO2 would only give, what?, 3.7 w/m2? and that would be for a few degrees warmer, more than one.
So clearly the figures don’t add up. There is much more energy required to get more water evaporated than increased greenhouse effect might deliver. No such thing as runaway evaporation water cycle and then we did not even take into account additional cloud forming that decreases the insolation to the surface.
Andre
Shorter version:
“OMFG we MAY all be about to DIE! The planet is . . . is. . .OH NOES! Give us plenty of grant money so we can can really agitate you about it by gathering some data that no one else has gathered yet, then making some really, really scary charts with it!”
@ Bill Illis … (October 5, 2010 at 5:21 am )
thanks for the links to Trenberth’s article …
@ AleaJactaEst …
re. the models … good insight 🙂
Jay Famiglietti, UC Irvine Earth system science professor and principal investigator on the study, … noted that while freshwater is essential to humans and ecosystems, the rain is falling in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons.
Rain now needs a “correct” reason to fall?
“The trends were all the same: increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean.”
Since the water that flows back into the ocean came from the ocean in the first place, it’s a closed system. What’s the big deal?
Its a real B.O.G.O.F(buy one get one freee) special with all the fears and alarmist talking points there.
With this you get em all thrown in, a mish mash of hysteria swirled around and mixed up. Its more rain and not enough, its too much rain and too little, regions are drying out and flooding(its your worst fears come alive) with a heating planet making more clouds producing more rain and storms. Its a bumber size super special offer, buy it now(or we will kill you,only joking).
I mean to say, rain is apparently falling on the wrong places for the wrong reasons and that must be bad mustnt it? I thought rain was good as it brings life to everything it touches but then again as a denialist I dont know the difference between correct rain and bad rain.
The evaporation and precipitation cycle is accelerating dangerously? How can more rain be bad when the CAGW orthodoxy/scriptures tell us that CAGW will mean a hot dry planet, will rain be deliberately avoiding the places where its needed and go off and drop somewhere bad?
Now call me cynical but it looks like the author(s) wanted to show their believer credentials so they piled everything into one big pot to make it look like good for the funding agencies above and in doing so they break CAGW scripture many times, just a little too eager to pad out their funding dog whistle with too many CAGW scare stories, a case of over egging the pudding?
It was not long ago that humans were taking too much ground water and too much river water, now call me dull but more rain into rivers means less taken from the ground and more for agriculture does it not? It all seems to pessimistic and doom laden as though the authors were suffering from clinical depression.
How can it rain for the “wrong” reasons and fall in the “wrong” places?
The last line is very telling, more research(funding)is needed. Oh yes there is the pay off line, all the alarmist scare stories pushing all the right funding buttons. Can you imagine then getting funding if the team had been optimistic?
“First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans”
Aside from the fact that they have zero evidence, it’s funny how they don’t even say why this is “alarming”. I guess they just “forgot” to go into the usual Alarmist song and dance about the theorized Younger Dryas event, wherein the gigantic (700 x 200 mi.) Lake Agassiz, held back by an ice dam breached, flooding into the Arctic Ocean and disrupting the thermohaline current. Probably because even they must realize how stupid it is to compare that theorized (and somewhat plausible) event and this completely speculative increase of the flow of freshwater into the oceans. But, this could be a handy way of “explaining” things if in fact we do get a cooling period.
So, if it warms it will be our fault, and if it cools it will be our fault. It’s science!
There has been a lot of noise in the past regarding Africa and drought, which is of course caused by AGW resulting in the greedy west. This noise is underpinned by increased desertification in the sub Sahara. Nobody seems fit to mention that the cause of desertification is farmers being unable to work their land due to war and terror caused by Marxists and their friends, plus food shipments undermining their markets. Without farmers working the land, it reverts back to desert.
BTW, the warmist have been trying for a least five years to come up with arguments to deflect the fact that warmer weather equals more rain. They need to keep up the narrative of AGW caused drought in order to frighten the masses. My first real indication that NASA had gone off the rails, in fact, was a press release for just such a study back in 2001 (or so). It was a blatant pack of nonsense and spin. It just so happened that it focused on the hydrology of the American south-west, which is a field I am a bit familiar with.
Oh, the point of a lack of data? That is pure BS. What I think they actually mean is lack of data that they can manipulate to produce the results they want. Every government monitors its water supply. Holy cow, that’s the main reason governments exist, to control water. Their data has to be accurate (else the people either die, or the government dies). Acurate verifiable data is the last thing that the Gaiaists want running around.
Alan McIntire says: October 5, 2010 at 6:15 am
Here’s a pertinent quote from the actual paper Bill Illis linked to:
“… For the relatively short 13-year period studied here, global discharge increased by 540 km3∕y2, ….”
So the actual increase was 540 / 36,055 = a 1.5% increase over a 13 year period.
No, the conclusion is that the INCREASE in discharge is 540 km^3 /yr = 1.5% EACH YEAR. I don’t t know if the measurements are right, but they are definitely NOT saying 1.5% total in the 13 years.
Surely the press release was not so difficult to understand.
“…if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow.”
A clear prediction.
“Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell…”
A statement of the limitations of observations up to the present.
“This paper uses satellite records of sea level rise, precipitation and evaporation to put together a unique 13-year record – the longest and first of its kind”
A statement of the new techniques used to overcome the previous observational limitations.
I suppose they could attempt to word their statements in a way that you and your ilk couldn’t possibly misunderstand, misquote, twist or complain about. I suspect you’d always find a way though.
REPLY: “you and your ilk” ??? That’s the sort of thinking that leads to red buttons there in the UK green circles you frequent. I think an apology is in order from you. 13 years isn’t even half the acceptable climatology period (30 years), and they allude to the short length of the record. And they ignore the well established hydrometeorolgical network data. Face it, this is crap.
-Anthony
There are an awful lot of complainers on this site. Here you are provided with information upon which you can take immediate action. But what do we get? Nothing but grousing.
Now that I know that we are getting too much rainfall — I for one will be taking immediate action! You should too! Do not leave it until it is too late!
The people with buttons are watching and waiting for those who do nothing!
JohnH says: October 5, 2010 at 6:27 am
Data for UK from 1961 onwards …
Google found it in 0.2 secs, someone wasn’t looking.
I think the operative word is “global”. The links here are for one country. And even then, the linked page clearly states “The runoff totals are based on gauged river flows only.” It is easy to find some records for some areas, but they were trying to get a global estimate.
That said, it would be interesting to correlate their satellite estimates with the gauged records or actual rivers to see how well they agree. I hope they thought to do this basic background work!
Andre Bijkerk
October 5, 2010 at 7:37 am
“So clearly the figures don’t add up. There is much more energy required to get more water evaporated than increased greenhouse effect might deliver. No such thing as runaway evaporation water cycle and then we did not even take into account additional cloud forming that decreases the insolation to the surface.”
#
But you’re cheating. Its no fair to use science and logic! Gaia is going to be very angry.
Agreed. It is generally recommended that scientists begin with a review of the literature. “A few” scientific measurements were actually taken before satellite data!
W.J.R. Alexander analyzed more than 100 years of river flow and precipitation data from the Southern Africa region, including 183 11 804 cumulateive years of data from 183 stations. Development of a multi-year climate prediction model, W.J.R. Alexander, ISSN 0378-4738 = Water SA Vol. 31 No. 2 April 2005 209-218 http://www.wrc.org.za
Alexander showed an
SOLAR ACTIVITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE — A SUMMARY, W.J.R. Alexander and F. Bailey ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT VOLUME 18 No. 6 2007
Alexander shows dry to wet flow reversals in 1933, 1954, 1973, and 1995. The three lowest years before a sunspot minimum had average flow of 52. The three following years average was 300. i.e. a 577% increase. In 2008 Alexander predicted a major drought in South Africa. That began in 2009.
Alexander WJR, Bailey F, Bredenkamp DB, van der Merwe A and Willemse N, (2007).
Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development. Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, Vol 49, No 2, June 2007, pages 32-44, paper 659. Alexander compiled a “474-page technical report entitled Climate change and its consequences – an African perspective (Alexander 2006). It includes 51 tables, 33 figures and 218 references.” (available on CD.)
Furthermore, W.J.R. Alexander observes:
They must be using flaky data. The error in their estimates often exceeds the estimates. More data with better QA/QC required. Send more money or we’ll all die!
Wow. I’ve lived long enough to live through the years of hype that the world was running out of fresh water to the hype of having too much fresh water. The pendulum has gone through a full swing.
Another example of just starting to measure something, and every new measurement is surprising: “unprecedented” and “worse than we thought”. Are these guys scientists? For real. I’m a scientist. It’s hard for me to comprehend that people that write these types of articles really understand what it means to be an experimental scientist.
In Burrito says:
October 5, 2010 at 7:11 am
Doesn’t this study (insufficient time scale notwithstanding) directly contradict the notion of positive water vapor feedback?
Positive feedbacks (against general ENTROPY) only occur in living organisms.
“Hotter weather above the oceans causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land.”
I swear, climate science is descending into complete idiocy. Oceanic evaporation is enhanced by dry air, not hot air.
In the NH and SH the oceanic evaporation is the greatest during each hemisphere’s winter season, when the air is dry (and cold) not when the air is hot.
Jan to Jun
http://oaflux.whoi.edu/plots/data/figmmean/fig_ave_ev_jan.jpg
Jul to Dec
http://oaflux.whoi.edu/plots/data/figmmean/fig_ave_ev_jul.jpg
In repy to Tim F:
yes, you’re right, I didn’t notice that /y2 which would be per year per year.
1.015^12 = 1.196 for a 19.6 percent increase.
The actual increase was supposedly 1.5%* 12 = 18%, implying a
1.18^ (1/12) = 1.39% increase per year.
As Andre Bijkerk has pointed out, starting with about 78 watts per year absorbed in
the latent heat of evaporation, an increase of 18% would eat up an additional
78 * 0.18 = 14.04 watts. I suppose half of that would be radiated back to earth, so
the net energy increase required would be only 7.02 watts. Consider that a doubling
of CO2 would supposedly increase the surface flux by 3.7 watts, CO2 has increased by
less than a doubling over the last century, and one must conclude that the change in rainfall has nothing to do with CO2 caused global warming.
1. An increase in rainfall supports Richard Lindzen’s theory about the water vapor feedback loop. Evaporation and condensation speed up in response to minor increases in temperature, thereby removing heat from the atmosphere and mitigating serious global warming.
2. Someone tell Ed Begley Jr. that his predicted fresh water shortage crisis has been temporarily put on hold.
3. Sam Kinnison was right. – Thanks Tom in Florida 🙂
David L. says:
October 5, 2010 at 8:11 am
Some people never learn the fine art of measuring thier own paycheck, and are surprised when the money runs out faster than previously imagined.
Anthony Watts posted: “I’m surprised Josh Willis would get involved in this as a co-author.”
I suspect that his name is tacked on as an author simply because he provided some additional data not yet publicly released.
On a related matter, Bob Tisdale has a post about newly updated Ocean Heat Content from NODC: http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/10/october-2010-update-to-nodc-ocean-heat.html
Tom in Florida says:
October 5, 2010 at 5:40 am
Funny and true. Thanks for that one.
Is the next paper going to tell us what the normal amount of rainfall is and where the right places are?
How can there be a wrong place for rainfall, outside of family events and inside our homes?
MSNBC has edited the press release for maximum doom and gloom slant.
Alan D McIntire says:
October 5, 2010 at 8:33 am
…As Andre Bijkerk has pointed out, starting with about 78 watts per year absorbed in
the latent heat of evaporation, an increase of 18% would eat up an additional
78 * 0.18 = 14.04 watts. I suppose half of that would be radiated back to earth, so
the net energy increase required would be only 7.02 watts.
Maybe that’s optimistic. Photons emitted by water (vapor) on the corresponding frequencies would hardly be affected by CO2 absorption/emission processes. It would basically only be interacting with the water vapor. Now there is orders of magnitude more water vapor below the cloud than above, favoring outradiation to space much more than penetrating the dense water vapor below to reach the surface again.
Well, I don’t know if it is true that more rain is falling. But one thing is plain to see – this is another extreme alarmist piece, loaded up with the sort of hyperbole that would be more at home on a Greenpeace or WWF blog. Eg
“In essence, he said, the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously because of greenhouse gas-fueled higher temperatures, triggering monsoons and hurricanes.”
Accelerating has to be suffixed with the adverb ‘dangerously; higher temperatures have to be prefixed with a lovely, bouncing alliteration that would not be out of place in Shakespeare’s Macbeth – ‘hubble bubble toil and trouble, when the greenhouse gas-fueled higher temperatures doth reach Dunblane, thus wouldst thou trigger monsoons and hurricanes.’
Ok, jokes over. The fact that such overblown rhetoric and hyperbole trips off the tongue of these scientists, is testament that their primary purpose is advocacy, not science. Indeed, I very much doubt there is any science worthy of the name lurking within the covers of this illustrious publication. But one lives in hope.
“Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell,”
Canada’s massive streamflow data set:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/rhc-wsc/default.asp?lang=En&n=894E91BE-1
HYDAT is the archival database that contains all water information collected through the National Hydrometric Program. These data include: daily and monthly mean flow, water level and sediment concentration for over 2500 active and 5500 discontinued hydrometric monitoring station across Canada.
Authors should have learned to google like the kids in grade school!
“13 years isn’t even half the acceptable climatology period”
You don’t normally give a damn about any “acceptable climatology period”, hyping weather events and short term “trends” regardless of statistical significance, so it’s a surprise that you care now. The authors do know about this:
“The researchers cautioned that although they had analyzed more than a decade of data, it was still a relatively short time frame. Natural ups and downs that appear in climate data make detecting long-term trends challenging. Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.”
Probably we can both agree that a press release that doesn’t even link to the paper in question, or even give its title, is useless. Now that I’ve finally tracked down the paper, I can see that the interannual variation in the quantities they measure is nothing like as large as the interannual variation in global mean surface temperatures, so less than 30 years could be meaningful. Have you read the actual paper?
REPLY: “You don’t normally give a damn about any “acceptable climatology period”, hyping weather events and short term “trends” regardless of statistical significance, so it’s a surprise that you care now.” Oh please, weather is what I do and have done for 30 years, it’s in the masthead along with many other topics. I’m not going to stop reporting on weather just because a grouchy UK academic says it is wrong for me to do so.
Heh, yes, Bill Illis tracked it down before you did, and if you’d noticed, I placed the link in the body of the post. And it’s still crap. – Anthony
“The trends were all the same: increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean.”
OK.
Now, salt water contains stuff.
With evaporation the stuff is left behind, that is the sew gets more “stuffy”.
Then the ex-sea water, less stuff, therefore less, precipitates as
the gentle rain from heaven.
It seems to me that less rain must descend than sea water goes up, because of the stuff depletion.
So fresh water supply is decreasing.
Sorry folks, that should be
“”sea” gets more “stuffy””.
My fault.
As this commenter pointed out yesterday in “Tips and Notes”, the full story, such as it is, is a very iffy, short-term proposition.
E.M.Smith says:
October 5, 2010 at 5:30 am
“So, it’s raining more, but we have more heat induced droughts, even though there is more rain…. Because?… Maybe it’s the wrong kind of rain. Maybe it’s “rotten rain”…”
Nah… it’s a dry rain.
Stephen Wilde says:
October 5, 2010 at 6:48 am
Looking at the effect of CO2 in isolation a faster hydrological cycle prevents extra downward IR from more CO2 from becoming measurable sensible heat by converting it immediately into unmeasurable latent heat which is then accelerated upward by faster convection in order to radiate it away into space faster from a higher level with zero effect on surface temperatures.
This has been part of my contention about IR from CO2 causing global warming. Water takes up > 2/3 of globe so AGW theory must say that IR from CO2 over < 1/3 globe (land) can heat entire globe. From the land you probably can subtract out green plants, people, animals, etc as IR hitting them is "gone" and cannot cause heating of the atmosphere.
“Freshwater is flowing into Earth’s oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming.”
Well, isn’t that special. Suspected things that might influence that:
1. ability to better measure flows today than could be done even 15 years ago so we are comparing apple data to orange data.
2. Uhm, is the salinity changing? Where is this water that is falling as rain due to global warming coming from? Might it be going right back into the oceans from which it came?
3. what is the impact of major dam projects around the world in increasing evaporation where there was much less before? Does that really change net outflow or does it simply change where the outflow takes place? For example, might Lake Powell act to move water outflow from the Gulf of Cortez to the Gulf of Mexico?
4. lets just blow a hole through the sierra nevada and turn the great basin back into a giant lake.
And what about then, of the drought armageddons so many times repeated on cable TV?
Can we not believe in Show-business scientists like Suzuki anymore?
Is any Noah’s descendant around to build us an Ark?
Note please:
they say there is no GLOBAL network of measurement.
it does little good to point out isolated systems.
Imagine if they did a global estimate using only a patchwork or regional systems?
They should have just stuck to detailing what observations they could make with 13 years of data, and not try to “connect” it with the theory. It’s consistent with the theory, but lots of short term measures are consistent. some short term measures are inconsistent. nothing much turns on the matter.
But hey, can we build more hydro power, instead of tearing damns down like greenies suggest? Just as a precaution against global warming. And more nuclear, can we build more of that, just as a precaution? precautionary principle also can be used for good ideas
So essentially they’ve “discovered” that when it rains in the mountains the water trickles to stream to rivers to the ocean, so when it rains more more water is flowing into the oceans.
They must be really smart to have figured out that really truly horribly complex cycle.
If true that the precipitation has increased in parts that already get most of the precipitation, and it has been that way for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, the billions of people who live in those areas thank mother nature for uping the fresh water supply as the need grows. Just look at China’s Huang He river which is in dire need of even more fresh water if it gonna reach the ocean all year round, which it doesn’t any more (Hey maybe we ought to thank all the thirsty Chinese for keeping the ocean levels lower than otherwise.)
RW says:
October 5, 2010 at 7:59 am
I suppose they could attempt to word their statements in a way that you and your ilk couldn’t possibly misunderstand, misquote, twist or complain about. I suspect you’d always find a way though.
Instead of the usual Alarmist Post Normal bilge, they might have said:
First-of-its-kindNew studyfindssuggestsalarmingpossible increase in flow of water from and into oceansI would see nothing wrong with that headline. Unfortunately, it does nothing to sell the Warmist ideology you and your comrades seem so fond of.
And where is the (supposed) increase coming from? Let’s see: “Hotter weather above the oceans causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land. The rainfall then travels via rivers to the sea in ever-larger amounts, and the cycle begins again.”
Setting aside their great leap in logic as to how more ocean water evaporates, and the repeatedly-debunked meme that it “unleashes more powerful storms over land”, the (supposed) “additional” freshwater that is “dangerously” increasing appears to be coming from the oceans themselves, with some additional from a bit of melting in the Arctic and some glaciers. So, there’s only a (supposed) speedup in the process. The Alarmist headline only mentions the supposed increased flow into the oceans, conveniently neglecting to mention it is primarily coming from the oceans themselves.
Report on the weather all you like. No-one’s going to complain. But that’s not what you do. What you do is crudely insinuate every few days that because it’s cold somewhere, then global warming isn’t happening. You conflate weather and climate, frequently, possibly with the intention of confusing your weaker-minded visitors, possibly because you don’t really understand the difference yourself. So it’s quite funny that you gripe here about the importance of the distinction.
You didn’t answer before, so I’ll ask again: did you read the actual paper, or just the press release?
REPLY: I did answer, you missed it. Where’s YOUR answer to the “you and your ilk” labeling?
You are the one insinuating. Look, we are never going to see eye to eye. I think you are a bullying coward, who does nothing more than hurl insults and snark from behind the comfort of anonymity from a university in the UK. If you want to be taken seriously, step up, show yourself, have the courage to put your name to your accusations of me. I’m getting tired of wasting time with you. We go through this every few days. Perhaps it is time to part ways permanently. Nobody will miss the angry anonymous rantings of “RW” here.
The paper is still crap, despite your attempts to bring other things into the argument that aren’t relevant. Whether you like my blogging style or not, 13 years isn’t climatology, and that’s a fact. – Anthony
Bruce Cobb,
“Let’s see: “Hotter weather above the oceans causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land.”
It all seems to point towards Willis Eschenbach’s cooling hypothesis. All this extra evaporation raises sensible heat high into the stratosphere and radiates away. A better headline would be: “Scientists discover negative feedback in global warming – climate change may not be as serious as once feared.”
Sounds a lot more accurate, doesn’t it?
I find it funny that they talk about arid areas getting less rain fall. Where I live in southern Alberta, Canada would normally be considered almost dessert conditions if it wasn’t for irrigation. This year we had so much precipitation that farmers fields were flooded for months. Crop planting, where it could be done, was so late that most farmers are just starting to harvest now in stead of being almost finished.
Steven Mosher
October 5, 2010 at 10:26 am
Note please:
they say there is no GLOBAL network of measurement.
it does little good to point out isolated systems.
Imagine if they did a global estimate using only a patchwork or regional systems?
#
It is far better for individual governments to monitor their hydrology because the data they collect HAS to be correct. Immediate life and death decisions are based on this stuff. A one point system will definitely be abused and manipulated for political gain by lefties. They have no qualms about causing death.
The authors of this study are full of it. As it is, there are a lot of records from those “isolated” systems, and considering that which they are measuring is not isolated, and most of the records are long and complete, they are useful in getting a picture of global hydrology. And the hydrologist working with them are professionals who know what they are doing. These guys just want a system that they can control and manipulate to overshadow any data that counteracts the narrative. NASA has lost all credibility on the subject long ago. They have been beating the satellites prove AGW drought message for almost a decade. “Just ignore that old data. And forget about those hydrologists that have been studying the subject for 150 years. They don’t know anything. We have some new data, see? Its so much better then the old. Look it even comes from NASA”. BTW, real hydrologists use a wide variety of information to understand what is happening. Which is very inconvenient from a message control point of view.
Multiple independent measurements are better then a single biased one!
I read the abstract and the paper and most of the comments. Now my two cents: I could not find any reference in the paper to ± 80% of the material in the press release. (I did a rough column inch comparison) Most of it is simply Jay Famiglietti’s musings. Most of those musings are of marginal value, in my view. I thought the paper was well done and could find little to quibble with. I believe the authors presented their work honestly. They did not in the paper draw any conclusions not supported by their data. The technique techniques and methods as described offer another puzzle piece and as suggested offer an opportunity to evaluate trends over time. They were careful to qualify their work by pointing out the time limited nature of available observations and cautioned against over extrapolation. Something J.F. must have missed in the text perpetration. (although this is mentioned in the non-quoted part of the press release
The press release on the other hand misrepresents the underlying work and should be ignored. It is unfortunate that Femiglletti’s coauthors we unable or unwilling to exert more control over his mouth. To be fair, I may not understand the reasoning and culture that underlies press releases. I can say, has this article not come to my attention here at WUWT, I would not have returned to Science Daily to re-read it and get the paper and abstract.
REPLY: My quibble with the paper is figure 2, they are drawing trends on water cycles from 13 years of data, that are overshadowed by longer cycles such as the AMO and PDO. 13 years isn’t much of a data set. We rountinely get yelled at by trolls like RW for looking at trends since 2000, or 1998, and here these authors are drawing conclusions from 13 years of data that can’t be ground truthed (so they say) by the hydrometeorological network. It’s crap IMHO – Anthony
Steven Mosher
October 5, 2010 at 10:26 am
Note please:
they say there is no GLOBAL network of measurement.
it does little good to point out isolated systems.
Imagine if they did a global estimate using only a patchwork or regional systems?
________________________________________________________
And the global estimate of temperature is based on?????????????
¨…a unique 13-year record – the longest and first of its kind.¨
Just a quibble, a nit-pick: my heuristic rules against reading ANYthing with superlatives modifying a posited singularity.
…unique, of its kind… longest and first of its only…..thirteen-year category: unique record,..and it is the longest…and newest,… and first!
“RW says:
October 5, 2010 at 10:44 am
You conflate weather and climate, frequently, possibly with the intention of confusing your weaker-minded visitors”
Gee wizz RW – I be then one of them many millions of weaker minded visitors.
If you can’t at least be polite at WUWT then perhaps its appropriate not to share your opinions on this blog.
” truth says:
October 5, 2010 at 7:25 am
Chris1958;
I live in Sydney, and have done so for decades—and visited often from Queensland before that, and I’ve never ever seen Sydney Harbour a ‘silty-brown’ colour—and nor have any other Sydneysiders that I know.”
I have lived in Sydney all my life and have seen Sydney harbour turn brown after extreme rain events several times.
This October has been the wettest of the decade beginning in 2010. No October has been wetter within that decade.
I should also point out that this October has been the driest of the decade beginning in 2010. No October has been drier within that decade.
These statements are undeniable. No scientist or model could contradict them.
If my comment seems juvenile, consider the pronouncements we hear so frequently concerning “records” for thirty – or thirteen! – year periods. Consider particularly those pronouncements which contain the word “record” and niftily omit all reference to the period covered.
Does my comment still seem juvenile? Are we living in a post-Enlightenment where people calling themselves scientists have an infinite appetite for data and no capacity whatever for verbal clarity or rational thought?
rcw says:
October 5, 2010 at 1:56 pm (Edit)
Steven Mosher
October 5, 2010 at 10:26 am
Note please:
they say there is no GLOBAL network of measurement.
it does little good to point out isolated systems.
Imagine if they did a global estimate using only a patchwork or regional systems?
________________________________________________________
And the global estimate of temperature is based on?????????????
################
Depends:
for ground stations it is based on a network that covers around 50% of the land. The temperatures found in this 50% sample, dont change even if you decrease that to 25% or if you look at other sources that sample outside the area. The measure given by this 50% sample is insensitive to the systematic removal of stations. While the temperature does vary considerably over land the spatial correlation is good. meaning that we can reliably estimate trends from a sample that is this size or smaller.
For SST, it depends on the years you are talking about. In the past it is derived from ship/abd bouy data, supplanted by Satillite.
To calibrate how well these two sampling approaches work, we only need compare them to global or near global products from RSS and UHA. The agreement, while not perfect, is good and trend estimates over similar periods while not perfect, are good enough to suggest that the sampling of the land product and the SST product does not unduly bias the answer.
My take is that there not:
1 a similarly extensive coverage of global rivers
2. NO product like RSS or UHA to compare it to.
Does that answer your question
DesertYote :
well if you believe the hydrology records are out there in an open accessible form, point them out and I can certainly download the data. And then suggest a hypothesis and we can test it.
As for speculations about why data isnt used? dunno, suggest a test that allows us to determine the intentions of those involved.
4. lets just blow a hole through the sierra nevada and turn the great basin back into a giant lake.
cool.
Reply to RW, James Allison said it pretty well above.
Since you’ve refused to answer to the ugly issues related to the “you and your ilk” comment you made, and because you repeatedly insult people, and want to run the discussion on your terms, then shape-shift them when they don’t suit the moment, I’ve decided it is best for you to leave my living room. You join a small but illustrious group of angry cowards that have been dis-invited from WUWT. Congratulations.
Go waste the taxpayers money of the UK funding your university position day job someplace else. You’ve been dis-invited from my “home on the Internet” as a bad dinner guest.
Moderators have been advised.
“Too much fresh water!”
Quick everyone, get to a river bank and take a piss!
DR says:
October 5, 2010 at 6:07 am
PNAS = the Big Box Mart for pal review tabloid science.
Too true.
Steven Mosher says:
October 5, 2010 at 10:26 am
Note please:
they say there is no GLOBAL network of measurement.
it does little good to point out isolated systems.
Imagine if they did a global estimate using only a patchwork or regional systems?
Aren’t you usually telling us what a wonderful job GISS does with a patchwork system for global temperature estimation?
Anthony Watts says: at 5:08 pm
John says: Thank you.
Wow. Another NASA funded study of irrelevance. Does Hansen or any of the TEAM pick who gets funded by NASA? Does it all smell “alarmingly” bad to you too? Excuse me, but in my opinion, this press release based post is so crappy, its an amazing example of how our tax $’s are funding the wrong jobs. Appalling, we’re paying for hot exhaled CO2 instead of productive work. Great photo, maybe he has an agent.
Anthony,
RW, harsh, but he appeared to be an ignoble, incessant, irritant. Does this mean he has been cast through the bottom of the troll bin? Its tough on this site to rise to that standard.
I wonder too if I will now be hounded by his ghost for this comment, as I am sure you will be too.
Bill Illis says:
October 5, 2010 at 5:21 am
Trenberth has a new paper which shows nothing is really going on with global precipitation numbers (since 1980) or global river discharge and land precipitation levels (since 1950).
I wish all these so called experts could get their stories straight. Isn’t this how they usually catch crooks on TV shows!
It seems rather strange to me that they can say a huge amount of fresh water is flowing into the ocean without a historical sequence of declining salinity measurements. Perhaps just as much water is evaporating as is coming in.
Spector says:
October 5, 2010 at 10:50 pm
“It seems rather strange to me that they can say a huge amount of fresh water is flowing into the ocean without a historical sequence of declining salinity measurements. Perhaps just as much water is evaporating as is coming in.
Good point Spector. The return of water from land back to sea is a complicated process, but the net salinity shouldn’t change too much as the extra flow of fresh water came from the sea in the first place.
There could be a slight increase in salinity caused by some of the extra water vapour being held in the atmosphere. Rain also gets trapped in ground pockets like dams e.t.c. and won’t start to be return until it is filled enough to overflow. My water supply, along with that of another one million or so users, comes from the Sussex chalk down aquifers and it can take a long period of decent rain to refill these following a dryer period.
Jim Barker says:
October 5, 2010 at 9:09 am
Is the next paper going to tell us what the normal amount of rainfall is and where the right places are?”
Here in Philly, according to a book published in 1847, the proper amount of rain is 40-46 inches per year. They noted a minimum rainfall of 23.25 inches in 1819 and a maximum rainfall of 55.5 inches in 1841. Now in the 21st century we experience 42.05 inches of rain per year. 1998 (the alleged hottest year on record) had 31.66 inches, 1999 had 48.5 inches, and 2000 had 44.2 inches. So in my estimationg, statistically speaking, the yearly precipitation has not change Philadelphia comparing the range 1796-1847 and the last decade (2000-2010). So I wouldn’t guess the Delaware river is any higher than it used to be, nor is it spilling too much fresh water in the Chesapeake Bay.
I’ve got to admit that this press release leaves me gobsmacked. It emphasizes that more water is discharging into the oceans each year and the rate of change is increasing but never mentions that the article indicates at the same time global ocean evaporation is increasing even more and at a greater rate. That is, if you believe a 13 year trend.
Additionally, if you examine all three parts of Figure 2, there appears to be an inverse correlation between precipitation and both discharge and evaporation ( just by visual comparison of Figure 2C to Figures 2A and 2B). WUWT?
Wow, a 1.5% rise from 1994 to 2006, that must have been that really wet Autumn in 2000.
I confused by this. Why? See below with links:
Similar stories below:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Greening_of_the_Sahel
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/greeningTheDesert.php